| This new section of the site (Autumn 2004) reflects my own focus on
community as the organizing structure of the site, just as it is of the
world in which we live. By arranging the obituaries by the individual cemetery,
we are able to tell the story of a particular neighborhood within our three
county area. Obituaries are the biographies of community members, and they
tell us collectively of the values and diversity and relationships of that
community served by the cemetery. This approach arises from my own project,
Sullivan-Rutland Genealogy Project, which is the genealogy of the communities
in and surrounding those two townships. While not everyone takes a community
based approach to genealogy and history, I think all researchers can benefit
by studying their ancestors in the context of their time and place. It
broadens our understanding of their lives and of our history in general.
It is also a way to keep our many hundreds of cemetery listings updated.
We do not have the resources to even finish reading all 700 cemeteries
in the area represented on this site, let alone update the ones we have
read. Obituary pages by cemetery help us keep current a little better.
I am also hoping that his organization will encourage site guests to
submit their obits AND ACCOMPANYING PHOTOS WHERE AVAILABLE to help this
part of the library develop. Those who have used the site for many years
understand that its success relies on the willingness of its users to also
contribute to the body of knowledge it contains. Obits can be submitted
typed in word processing or even just in your email and sent to me (Joyce
M. Tice). Please do not send just images or copies unless you have no alternative.
Those will have to be sent to a typist and we are short of those. Obits
can be current or old. If the obit does not specify the cemetery and you
know it, please include that information so we can present the obit in
the proper cemetery page. If possible include the paper that published
it and the date. Obits for people with local connections buried outside
of our three counties will go to the regular obit - clipping pages. New
pages added here will not necessarily be listed on the What's New pages
as they often start with a single obit and develop more fully later. They
are added to regularly as obits are received and processed.
The continued development of this section of the site is up to the willingness
of you, the site guest, to submit your obits. There are already 215 pages
of obits on the site that are not arranged by cemetery, but they are a
source for this section as well. If you submit an obit from an existing
page, please say so and give me the page number, so that I can delete it
from the other location. The more obits we have submitted the better
we can tell the story of these communities and the people who have lived
in them.
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